Weekly Blog 7/23/23

Hey all, July just hasn't been my month. Was feeling sick all week and yesterday feels like the worst of it. Right now I'm feeling a bit better, but I'm still tempted to keep this short.

Videos

So, it seems safe to say that there won't be an editorial next month. Maybe if I get far enough ahead in all my other videos, I'll resume work on my next one, but it's not a high priority until I build up more of a backlog with Pokemon XG recordings.

Granted, despite how terrible I was feeling yesterday, I actually had a real nice and fun recording session earlier today so maybe that timeframe isn't as far away as I thought. With Dawn of Djinn and home life, there will always be something else for me to work on though, so it's still too early to say. For now, I'm just happy I finally got some commentary for things that kept getting put off for so long like the 3rd Battle Bingo video.

While I'm not yet done with all the videos for the month, the current plan for August is to finish uploading the Kirby Dream Land series and then jump into a new schedule that does Pokemon XG uploads Monday & Friday, with my Pikmin 1 playthrough going up every Wednesday. Ideally, I'd also squeeze in a new Game N Chill the first Saturday of the month too, but no promises beyond that there will be a new Game N Chill sometime in the month.

As for streams, I've had to take a couple weeks off and while I was ready to get back into it this weekend, because of how I was feeling physically ill, I didn't want to push my luck with a live stream. No promises yet for next weekend, as I want to see if I'm actually starting to feel better or if I'll need some more rest before fully recovering. But I will tease what the next stream will be.

I've had some time to think about what I'll take on next and am leaning towards resuming a stream of a game that was originally a one-off stream. The Lost Age Randomizer and Pikmin 2 are the main candidates I had in mind, but I think between with not wanting to get burnt out on Pikmin with the 4th game being out and it being a bit since I've last took on anything Golden Sun related on the channel; I'm currently leaning towards resuming the Lost Age Randomizer. Lost Age is a big game so I'm certain I'll need to break it up with other games in-between, but I think focusing on trying to finish that seed will give me some much needed exposure to the sequel.

I don't think I've done a full playthrough of Lost Age in about a decade. It's crazy to say, but I think the last time I did a full playthrough was back when I let's played the game back in 2012/2013 and with the last video of said LP happening in August 2013...yeah it really has been a decade hasn't it. I have played the game since then, even excluding the Randomizer, especially if we count Reloaded since I did try giving that I chance, but in all of those mis playthroughs I've never even got to the boat. So there's still a lot of Lost Age that I'm rusty on and I guess experiencing it through a randomizer is better than nothing. So we'll go until I get too stuck to progress, probably taking a break or two in-between to play other games along the way. Again, no promises that'll start next week, but when I'm ready to get back into streams that's the plan.

Dawn of Djinn and Similar Projects

Most of my work with Dawn of Djinn this week has just been working on the next major dialogue edit and some boss fights from around that area. One of these week's once I finish that section of the game, maybe I'll show off some clips on Discord or something.

I think I'm about done with a side mod that's just Golden Sun 1 with some quality-of-life features, but I didn't want to share those publicly until I made a version of the Lost Age that was compatible with it as well. The original goal was to take the old 20th Anniversary mod and make some updates to it, but I've ran into some frustrating snags. Needless to say, with everything else this week, I haven't had a chance to come up with an alternative yet. That said, if you can't wait, I've shared the Golden Sun 1 patches on my Discord and it should still be compatible with the old 20th anniversary mod, so that is an option. Check out the pin messages on #mis-mods for more detail...

https://discord.gg/wVDz5QJd

Last (and least) I technically did work on Sweet Expedition for a couple days, but lost inspiration relatively fast. It's a shame because it's been sitting around, closer to done than not, but I've just haven't had much inspiration as I've lost a lot of interest in Paper Mario as a whole. I can already tell it's not going to be done before TTYD-64 gets released, due to my own negligence. I'm sure if I worked on it even half as much as I did Dawn of Djinn it would have been done months ago. But my interest just isn't with Paper Mario anymore so even though it's enjoyable enough when I actually do work on it, any desire to complete it is more out of feeling bad about abandoning it when there is so much done already. So for now I think I'll put a loose goal of having the main mod by the end of the year, though once I actually find the inspiration to work on it again, that much should be done much sooner.

For now though, Dawn of Djinn is my main focus and I don't regret it, there's plenty of Paper Mario content out there to enjoy, way more than there is Golden Sun.

Mis

So garden is going along great; managed to procrastinate playing Pikmin 4; several days since it's release; got an amazing set of cards from the latest pack I opened, but too drained from writing the rest of this blog to upload the picture. I wanted to talk more about things with it being a couple weeks now, but I've rambled on for so long as is just talking about videos and that, so maybe I'll use that time to finally play Pikmin 4 before the Internet spoils it for me instead.

Oh yeah, I finally got to try Pokemon Sleep yesterday, seems nice I talked about all my first impressions in a Battle Bingo video I recorded today so I'll save talking about it for next week's blog. I'll have a better idea how I feel about the game after a week "playing" it anyways. Is it strange that I'm more excited to play Pokemon Sleep that I am Pikmin 4.

I don't know, the demo just left me feeling off, despite all the elements I enjoyed of it, making it very easy to procansate. Which sucks because the Youtube algorithm loves to spoil things making me very stressed from both perspectives. If I don't play it, I'll have the game I've been waiting to see for almost a whole decade spoiled to me by a dumb video that puts the final boss in a thumbnail or something, if I do play it I might get to fixated or stress by the elements I don't like about it to be able to enjoy the game as a whole. It just feels like a loose-loose situation, which sucks because Pikmin is one of the few franchise I still like that actually got a new game somewhat recently. I don't want Pikmin to become stressful to me in the same way Pokemon does. If I don't like Pikmin anymore, then what will I have left. Hopefully once I actually get to play past the demo I'll start liking the game again, because I don't know what I'll do if I dislike it. Some days... I just hate the Internet.